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| Ok, here are a few pics and hopefully a understandable explaination of what is done in the fall to plant grass for seed production.
Normally the operation is, plant the seed with a band of charcoal right over the top of the row in as narrow of a band as you can get and still cover the row. Usually about an inch or a little more. I forget the amount of punds of charcoal put in the ligquid, which is water and starter fert, but the application rate to the field is from 35 to 45 gpa depending on row spacing etc. Then we go in with a sprayer set up with split booms. IE: booms that are divided in the middle so we can double spray the sterilant, usually karmex, and be able to shut a right and left side. We do this because the carbon can neutralize up to 1.5 times the application rate, but not 2 times the rate. To do this we double spray with a half rate mix in the sprayer. That way any overlapps will only have 1.5 times the rate, and any skips will hopefully at least have half rate to get by somewhat. This procedure is to keep weeds under control untill the grass seedlings are big enough to take other labelled chems.
Ok, last year, fall of '06, our neighbor that we usually hire to plant for us (because it takes a bit of work to setup and the fertilizer takes a lot of work to clean up so one needs quite a few acres to plant to be worthwhile) was gone hunting, I baling wired and duct taped my own setup together. Which was fine cause I wanted tot ry to do the band and spray all in one operation anyway. So here's my setup with the karmex in the sprayer and the carbon in the pull tank. Hose clamps are my friend.:-)
This fallowing a 2 year red clover rotation. I also tryed to minimum till this to save soil erosion. That's why you see so much clover duff on top. It worked excellent too.
Here's my drill nozzle setup on my IH 5100. We plant on 18" spacings when we can. (till something better comes along anyway) I wish I had a better depth band setup like the deeres do. I'll show a pic of that too further down.
Ok, I had to have the boss take the pics of me running the rig, and he did'nt understand about waiting for the camera to finish before moving, so I only have a few pics of this operation, and none of the close-ups of the carbon in the row turned out.:-(. But here is the rig planting. The dark behind the machine in the rows is'nt all carbon, its good moisture.
Here's that same field about a month later in allmost the same spot as the other pic was taken.
I had a little problem with a hose on the sprayer blowing a part. This was the karmex hose. Thankfully it made a noise when it blew and I cought it near instantly. But here is a pic of the spot. You can see the weeds where no karmex made it. Also you can see where the karmex got a bit heavy and the grass row could'nt make it.
And here is a pic of the neighbors drill opener setup and the nozzle at work. He just stopped here to check on the drill. You dont want anything going wrong and not catching it right away as you can imagine what that would cost later. Anyway, that is the reason for the heavy carbon spot. I need to get some of those truvee openers but the dealer said this year the openers were on backorder till december.:-(
And one of the neighbors machine running. This is in '05 and behind a green bean rotation.
Let me know if forgot something. | |
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Tonesaguy. Carbon planting grass. (pics)
